DIY Kid’s Christmas Ornaments Craft: Great Fine Motor Practice Too!
ByAlyLast updated:
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My mom has a Christmas tradition where every year she has the grandkids decorate a Christmas ornament. It is a fun event they look forward to, and it is a way of inspiring creativity.
This year, she decided to have them create Christmas ornaments using small manipulatives, stickers, and more. It was kind of an “Invitation to Create” ornament creation project. Allowing open-ended crafting is important in our household, and I also like how putting all the items in the small ornament holes is a great fine motor activity for my one-year-old!
My daughter and her cousins really enjoyed making their own ornaments. They also really enjoyed hanging them on the miniature Christmas tree in the playroom as well!
Here’s how we decorated ornaments in this fun Christmas DIY for kids!
Supplies needed:
Clear Christmas ornament balls. Make sure to get ones that have a hole at the top rather than come apart in the middle. That would be no fun trying to get the sides together while keeping all the goodies inside. Having a small hole also helps with perfecting fine motor skills.
Lots of Christmas craft supplies. Examples include stickers, confetti snowflakes or other Christmas shapes, small balls, small bows, pieces of ribbons, pieces of beads, little trinkets, etc. Here’s what we used this year! The more options, the better in my daughter’s opinion! Just make sure items that you want to go inside the ornament will fit through the whole. Stickers and such don’t need to fit as long as you plan to use them on the outside.
How to make your own DIY ornaments:
These ornaments are super simple to make and decorate and allow for so much open-ended creativity!
First, lay all the supplies out on the ground or on a table/mat/etc. Or use the carpet as we did! The kiddos loved making a huge mess of all the goodies! (I did not love having to clean it all up.) At least they tried to “help” clean up.
The majority of our Christmas supplies came from Target 90% off Christmas clearance, Hobby Lobby Christmas clearance, and Michael’s grab bags. So, just keep an eye out for things like this after the holidays to stock up for next year. This makes for a cheap Christmas kid’s craft!
Next, take the clear ornament and take off the top and store it for later. Ideally out of reach. My 23-month old still puts stuff in her mouth every once in a while, so this was definitely a supervised activity!
Allow the children to put whatever they want inside the ornament. They can stuff it to the brim, or they can just put a few things in. As I said, this is great fine motor practice trying to fit small items in the small hole.
If using Christmas stickers or sticker gems, allow them to stick them on the outside of the ornament. We love stickers in our household and have more than we know what to do with!
When done, put the metal top back on and display on the Christmas tree!
Check out the ornaments the grandkids made this year. Grayson’s was very simple and didn’t have much on the inside. He really like putting stickers on the outside of the ornament though.
Madison really wanted to fit as much stuff as possible inside her ornament! She also loved the felt stickers.
